Muse
by kitsieandmeow
Summary: Sasori has lost his desire to work on his puppets. He sets out to find his muse and does so in the form of particular cat-hatted nin. One-shot, some swearing.


My mind just isn't working anymore (and the fact that I suck at writing Kanky's character)...I can't find the desire to write... We've all been there, we want to but we just can't write/create anything. I'm still in that slump but my mind finally coughed something out so I think I'm on my way to recovery! Now just to go catch my muse, I think she ran off to chase butterflies or something ^^"

Dedicated to XxDarkSarcasm1010xX and everyone else who's ever fallen into writer's slump~

**Please Enjoy the story~!**

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Muse

Sasori threw another wooden hand to ground in disgust. His puppets were disassembled and scattered about the hotel room. He'd been constantly replacing arms and heads, dismantled even his most prized puppets in a sudden fit of hatred toward them. They were pathetic. They were flawed. Where he once saw infinite beauty in his everlasting works of art he now saw heaps of worthless junk, hours upon hours of work wasted to create the puppets before him.

Glass eyes and cracked faces stared at him, mocking him; _you used to be able to fix us without a thought. You used to be able to create us with ease. Why not now? Fix our broken parts, our faulty weapons, turn our wrecked bodies into the eternal pieces of art with the skilled fingers and practiced hands like you always did. _

Brown eyes dropped to look at the hands resting in their lap. Strewn about before him were his tools, his wires, his poisons. He stared at them blankly. He knew how to use them. He knew how to put his puppets together. He knew how to repair them.

_So why can't I make something worthwhile of them? Why can't I use my tools like I did before? Where the hell did my talent go!_

He ground his teeth as he got up to begin cleaning up the mess. He didn't bother to reassemble his puppets, he'd do it later when the drive to create returned to him. Tools were packed away, bodies stored back into their respective scrolls, leaving the room looking as clean as before albeit slightly moved around.

As he sat on the bed looking around at the sparsely furnished hotel room it occurred to him he'd been like this for days. He no longer had that itch to create, no longer had the burning need to make his puppets. Marionettes and chakra strings no longer seemed to have the same appeal to him as before. It felt like work now. He had reasoned that just doing it would bring the motivation back, he'd just gotten a bit lazy, so forcing himself to work on his puppets would get him back in the swing of things. It didn't.

He had started to become bored with working on them. Sick of seeing their ruined bodies, sick of fixing their bodies only to have them break again. He'd taken a break from making them but the desire to create had not returned. It was dawning on him now, so many weeks and hours of forcing himself to continue his craft later, that perhaps something else was wrong. Perhaps his motivation, his "muse" was no longer there.

But he was the Puppet Master, he shouldn't need a muse to create. Yet, despite still enjoying the ideas of art that lasted forever he found he could no longer make it.

He stood up and readjusted one of his arms. Setting the offending limb back into the socket with a click he started toward the door. Mind having been made up in seconds he slipped on his cloak. If his muse had left him then he would just have to go track him down.

It was in the early hours of the morning that Kankuro decided to work on Crow. Sitting up on balcony of his home in the warm night air felt nice. He listened to Gaara moving about downstairs, he most likely wanted to rest and be done with work but the overwhelming boredom of laying in bed unable to ever sleep always got him up and doing something. Kankuro shared his brother's urge to be active for once, but instead of cleaning the house he was cleaning the annoying bits of sand from Crow's appendages.

He heard the door downstairs followed by Gaara's gravely voice announcing he was going for a walk. Kankuro yelled back a yeah and went back to work. Life was good right now and he was content to clean the grit from between Crow's sockets. He went on like that for several minutes, mind happily blank as went about his task. And then he heard something.

_Tap._

He stopped. That sounded an awful lot like someone landing right next to him. He paused for a second before reaching for a poison vile, not giving the indication of having heard the intruder. It wasn't Gaara, nor Temari. Neither of them would do this no matter how bored they were. A minute crawled by and Kankuro found himself humming as carefully re-tipped the edges of Crow's blades with poison. He could feel the presence of the person behind him, he could feel their eyes boring into his back.

He went on ignoring them, waiting for them to attack. He was slowly reached up to adjust his cat-hat when the man spoke, "It's good to see you taking care of them."

Kankuro froze. That sounded an awful lot like a certain Puppet Master he once had the displeasure of getting his ass kicked by. He waited a for a second, feeling no movement behind him, "Akasuna no Sasori. This is a surprise." And a horrible time to be caught with his puppet down...

He heard a dry chuckle from behind him. He turned his head and was taken aback by the S-ranked Nin sitting down beside him. Sasori reached out and took one of Crow's arms and a rag and began cleaning out the sand, "This old thing always required constant cleaning. It was always such a bother."

Kankuro didn't know what to say. He was sure it was trap but he'd yet to have been attacked. Though it was just absurd, he was sitting with Sasori who was calmly helping him clean Crow.

After another minute of silence the younger man finally shrugged, "I...like being able to work on him..." Inside he was telling himself that was a lame answer worthy of a cringe.

Sasori didn't cringe though, he looked at the boy with slight surprise, "You like cleaning out the sand and grit? Doesn't it ever feel tiresome?"

_The fuck is this? Some kind of test? _"It's...calming..." _Fuck I'm stupid..._

"Hm.." The red head sounded thoughtful as went about removing the sand from between the segments of Crow's arm.

Sasori hadn't found Kankuro at random. He'd searched him out due to his knowledge of puppets. And that he used _his_ old puppets. Kankuro didn't seem to have the trouble he did, he was able to continue doing even the most irksome of tasks for his marionettes without a second thought. Just like Sasori used to...

Kankuro wondered briefly if this was a diversion but it was just too odd. He felt the awkward silence start to build up on his shoulders enough to make him shiver a bit. He didn't realize the other didn't feel awkward at all, only thoughtful.

_What keeps your muse bound to you?_

Kankuro finally let some words past his lips to break the lull in conversation, "So...where's your partner off to?" _God I feel lame..._

"Hn? Deidara is off on a mission elsewhere. Won't be back for a few days."

Both were mute again for some time.

Kankuro was starting to feel antsy. What was up with this? Why wasn't Sasori attacking him?

Sasori was still thinking. Cleaning out Crow did seem a little calming, if only because so little thought was required for the task that it allowed one to drift into their own mind for a bit. He glanced at the boy beside him, looking for all the world confused and worried all wrapped up into a face painting, cat-hat wearing vessel. _Perhaps it's best to be direct._

"Have you ever lost interest in puppets? As in the motivation to make them?"

"Uh..." _What? Is he asking me for advice?_

"I hate waiting. Spit it out already."

_Geez, this guy... _"Yeah...once or twice I guess..."

"What did you do to get it back?"

"I..." Kankuro thought a minute, deciding to ignore the bizarre circumstance in which he was talking to an S-ranked criminal, "I did something different...to get my mind flowing again..." He sat up a bit, "I..I ignored the things I felt like I had to work on...and I did the things I wanted to do. Eventually, I started to get back my...my..." he closed his eyes, searching for the word.

"Desire to work?" the S-ranked Ninja offered.

"Yeah..desire to work on my puppets again...I'd gotten so fixated on having to repairing them out of necessity that I forgot I started because I enjoyed it...So..I worked on new weapons for Crow, something I'd wanted to do for awhile but ignored because I though I had so much else to do...and I got back into it. Back into wanting to work on Crow and Ant and the others.." Kankuro nodded. _Yeah..got my motivation back..._ "And.."

Sasori was staring at him, listening attentively, the arm and rag sat abandoned in his lap in favor of the young man's words.

"I did something to change it up...something new. I made weapons I'd never thought I would make for Crow..." _...did I really just tell him all that? _

Sasori leaned back and looked up at the once black sky that had paled into a light blue as the sun ascended to it's throne. His fingers itched to do something, he had the need to work on something...to create something. He looked at Kankuro once more who was looking thoughtful and somewhat embarrassed.

Kankuro jumped slightly when he felt cool lips press into his cheek, "Well then, my little Muse, I have work to do. If I lose my motivation again I'll have to come find you."

Sasori stood up and set the arm and rag back. Kankuro blinked at him, "W-what?" _Muse? Why am I a Muse?_

"Take care of my puppets."

And with a poof of smoke Kankuro was alone again. He sat slightly dazed for a minute until he heard a door downstairs.

"Kankuro I'm back. Do you want me to cook breakfast?"

Kankuro shook his head, "Uh..er...y-yeah! I'll be down in minute..."

_What the hell just happened?_

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_**I hoped you enjoyed it~ Please review if you liked it! **or know how to get out of writer's slumps...

I think it's a cute pairing even though I like SasoDei better~ Ah, I may have fudged some details up there, it's been awhile since I watched those episodes...I hope they weren't too OOC...

Now just to get that damn Muse...

Muse: Wheeee! *runs off somewhere*

No come back! *chases*


End file.
